Margaret Jacobson

Washington

Dist of Columbia

Freedom

Artist's statement

Full Artist's statement

Central themes in my work represent journeys and cycles in life.We as humans endure challenges and overcome them, go through changes, embark on new beginnings, and sometimes endings choose us, we don’t choose them. Other times we want struggles to end so badly, but they keep on going testing our inner strength; we wonder how much longer we need to fight, when the pain will stop; then finally we make it because we refuse to let our struggles defeat us. When the “war” is over, we weep for the past, but also in relief because there are new beginnings that lie ahead of us that are filled with happiness and a real purpose, the life we are all meant to live.

These experiences can be analogous to nature’s seasons. Summer represents fire and activity, that period in ours lives in which we continuously strive for our goals. Fall represents endings; endings to struggles or chapters of events in our lives that need to end in order for us to grow and evolve. Winter represents the stillness after the fall. Endings can be very dramatic and winter provides us a period and the space to weep after the fall and/or reflect on events in our lives so we can take the knowledge and intuition we gained to embark on a new beginning. Spring represents new beginnings and chapters in our lives, a rebirth from the old and a path to embark on a new adventure. Then we come back to another summer; summer allows us to gain momentum and speed after spring to achieve new goals and aspirations in a new cycle of our lives. These are the continuous cycles of life in which we continue to grow and evolve. Everyone’s experience is different and unique to the individual, but these cycles of life are common to all.

Other subject matter I paint is animals. Animals also have significance; elephants represent strength, lions represent things majestic, giraffes represent reaching new heights and frogs represent rebirth since they themselves go through cycles, first being born in water and with maturation emerges on land.

The colors I use are very bright and vivid; commonalities between my work are various shapes and lines embedded in the image that stylistically vary from looking like a mosaic or constellation, to abstract-representational (in the sense that the shapes and lines make the image more abstract, but at the same-time the viewer understands what the image is supposed to represent).